Happy Birthday Lydia!

Lydia turned four last month. After the traditional Chick-Fil-A dinner, we came home for cake.

I made the mistake of asking Lydia (about 6 weeks prior) what kind of cake she wanted. This was a mistake because I really had something in mind to make. It's fun for me to make cute girl cakes (Ty has always requested a chocolate cake with chocolate icing, not much there for me to be creative with).

Well, Lydia has things in mind, too. She requested a cinnamon roll cake. I have no idea what a cinnamon roll cake is, but I had a feeling if I didn't get it right, she wouldn't be happy. I tried to deter her with pictures of cute cakes online, but she said she could have those cakes on other birthdays. This year she wanted a cinnamon roll cake.

So I made a cinnamon coffee cake (in a round pan to be reminiscent of a cinnamon roll), drizzled it with white icing and voila!--a cinnamon roll cake. She was happy and it was delicious.

Unwrapping her present...A fish...

She has named him Fishy and she loves to feed him every day.

Nature Fun

I've really been enjoying my backyard lately. My zinnias finally bloomed (they got a late start) and are attracting butterflies.

I planted some Italian parsley, specifically to attract Swallowtail butterflies. So I was excited to finally see a baby swallowtail caterpillar on it a couple days ago. I captured this picture today. He may look big, but he's only about as long as the first digit of my index finger.

A friend had given us two of this same kind of caterpillar last year. We put them in a mason jar with air holes in the lid. I fed them parsley and then they made chrysalises. But the sad thing was that they never broke out. It was anti-climatic to say the least. I had built it up all summer to the kids, just to say, "oh well, I guess we won't get to see butterflies being born."

A friend told me that she had the same thing happen to her. They put the chrysalis in a shadow box to save. Then, months later, her son was freaking out over a bug crawling down the hall. It was the butterfly! For some reason, perhaps the weather, it took much longer to break out.

So with this in mind, I kept our chrysalises in the jar, on the windowsill, all winter. I was hoping that a warm spring day would bring them out. But no, they still didn't break out. May passed, then June, and I figured I should just throw them out. But I'm a procrastinator and didn't.

One morning, a couple weeks ago, I was doing my dishes and caught sight of some huge black bug out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and realized it was one of our butterflies! We released it in the backyard. Then a couple days later, the other one broke out. They stayed in that jar, in their chrysalises, for about a year! Now, I call that a miracle!

Here is a picture of one in the jar, just before we released it.

And here he is, on the parsley.

Moses Supposes

I Love Zinnias!

I love my Zinnias. I found this butterfly enjoying them, this morning.

Ready for a Change

Ty has worn his hair long for about 4 years.

He decided he wanted to try it short.

Checkout the transformation: